It is a known art to make hinges for doors closing compartments that comprise two bodies hinged together, and fixed respectively to the door and to the frame of the compartment, in which one of the two bodies houses appropriate elastic means, usually consisting of a cylindrical helical spring, acting on the other hinge body so as to counteract, or facilitate, the motion in one direction and/or towards certain angular positions assumed by a body with respect to the other.
To such a structure, it is known to couple a dampener, generally of a fluidic cylinder-piston type, which is configured to exert a further braking action during the respective motion in at least one direction, of the two hinge bodies, and therefore of the door with respect to the compartment, in order to partially counteract the action of the elastic means and/or prevent that in the fully open or fully closed position of the compartment undue shock between door and compartment frame can occur due to an excessive force imparted by the user to the door during the closing or opening thereof.
For example, U.S. Pat. No. 6,397,836, granted on behalf of THE STANLEY WORKS, teaches how to create a hinge of the above mentioned type, in which a mobile body, constrained to the door, and a fixed body, constrained to the respective compartment frame, are reciprocally hinged, and wherein a spring and fluidic actuated dampener are housed on the mobile hinge body and are simultaneously urged by sliders pushed by a connecting rod, which is in turn hinged at one end to the fixed body and at the other end is constrained to one or more of said sliders. The spring and the dampener, constrained to the mobile body, therefore exert a continuous counteracting, or facilitating action to the respective sliders displacement and therefore a continuous counteracting, or facilitating action, to the relative rotation of the mobile body with respect to the fixed hinge body.
In this way, during the relative motion of the mobile hinge body with respect to the fixed one, the clockwise and counterclockwise rotational motions are variously counteracted, or facilitated, by the elastic means and the dampener. Moreover, thanks to the dampener, it is possible to avoid any impact at least during the closing of the door.
Said solution, foreseeing that the dampener is continually stressed during the opening or closing stroke of the door, requires a careful designing of the dampener itself, which must not only be actuated in both rotation directions of the mobile hinge body, and therefore of the door, but also cannot be configured neither to exert an excessive dampening action upon the hinge, which would make the opening and closing of the door itself difficult, nor to exert a reduced dampening action, which would defeat the purpose of its use.
Considering the fact that the main purpose in using a dampener in a hinge with motion counteracting elastic means is, in many applications, to prevent the door frame from slamming into its respective compartment frame when the door reaches its closing position has been proposed in European Patent EP-A-1847670, on behalf of NUOVA STAR, to allow the actuation of the dampener only when the door to which the hinge is coupled, reaches its closed position.
More specifically, the NUOVA STAR patent informs on how to make a hinge provided both with elastic means housed in the mobile hinge body for the purpose of counteracting or facilitating the opening/closing movement of the hinge, and of a fluidic type dampener, also constrained to the mobile hinge body, which counteracts the motion of the hinge only in the vicinity of its closed position, being actuated by a slider, slidable on the mobile hinge body, which is configured to engage with the respective fixed body only when the mobile body, and therefore the door, reaches its closed position.
This solution, which provides that the dampener actuating slider is pushed due to the support of the fixed hinge body only at a certain angle range, and transmits a translational and substantially unaltered motion to the dampener, suffers the drawback that, because of the necessarily reduced hinge size, the slider translation stroke driving the dampener results particularly reduced, and therefore the displacement of the dampener actuating element results in being considerably limited, thus making it necessary to use dampeners designed “ad hoc”, capable of exerting a proper dampening action even in the presence of small movements of their actuating element (for example, the piston in a fluidic cylinder-piston type dampener).
But these customized dampeners, as will be clear to one skilled in the art, appear to be bulky and/or of complex construction and therefore expensive.
This drawback, in fact, prevents the use of this type of hinge in applications where it is necessary to concentrate the dampening action of the dampener in a small angular range reached by the mobile hinge body with respect to the respective fixed body and/or when the hinge bulk dimensions should be limited because of the geometry of the door and the respective compartment.
Note also that the direct transmission of motion from the abovementioned slider to the dampener actuating element, as described in EP-A-1847670, can also lead, though in rare cases and depending on the different dimensions of the hinge, to an excessive stroke of the dampener actuating slider that directly results into an excessive movement of the dampener actuating element itself, thereby making it necessary, also in this case, the predisposition of an expensive and complex customized dampener.
Also note that the direct transmission, i.e. unchanged, of the motion from the fixed body of the hinge to the dampener actuating slider, thanks to the pressure exerted by the fixed body when the actuating slider comes to rest upon the latter, does not prevent jamming of the dampener, resulting in a rebound of the door when the door closing speed constrained to said fixed body is excessive, and therefore when the impact between the slider and the fixed body has an un-negligible energy.
Finally, as one skilled in the art can easily understand, since in the applications described in EP-A-1847670, the amount of displacement of the actuating slider is in relation to the amount of mechanical clearance that is created during the medium life-span of the dampener, it becomes evident that, over time, the effectiveness of the dampener decreases more and more, until the clearance that is created between the mechanical parts results in dampener malfunction.
It is therefore the aim of the present invention to create a hinge of the aforementioned type, which solves the drawbacks of the known prior art, mentioned above, therefore allowing the dampener to operate in any angular range, large or small as desired, during the movement of the mobile hinge body with respect to the fixed one without dampener jamming, resulting in the rebound of the door coupled to the hinge, and without requiring the use of a complex and expensive custom-made dampener.
It is another aim of the present invention to provide a hinge having counteracting/facilitating elastic means of the motion of the mobile hinge body with respect to the fixed one that does not present excessive bulk dimensions and allows an effective dampening action, at least when the mobile hinge body moves within a certain angular range with respect to its respective fixed body.
A further aim of the present invention is to create a hinge of the aforementioned type which allows the dampener to act effectively during the entire life-span of the hinge, without the clearance which is formed between mechanical parts during the use of the hinge itself, results in dampener malfunction.